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Meet Ektor Rivera, Actor and Ambassador to this Year's Puerto Rican Day Parade

On the stage, you might know Ektor Rivera as a young Emilio Estefan in the Broadway hit "On Your Feet." But the artist is now also an ambassador of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, and he has a lot of thoughts on the current affairs of his island.

The Bayamón native sat down with Latina, where he spoke about the role of artists as change-makers.

“We're artists not just for ourselves. We're artists to deliver something, to change minds and to make people believe that they can do it," the 37-year-old said.

One of the issues he cares deeply about is the debt crisis currently devastating his island. Particularly, Rivera is among many protestors pushing for Puerto Rico's debt to be audited, as the island's critical debt audit commission was recently eliminated after it was deemed “redundant” by the Financial Oversight & Management Board established by the controversial PROMESA law.

"Puerto Rico right now is having an economic crisis, and we need support. We need more people to know what is happening to our country, to our people,” he said. “We want to know how 70 billion dollars, how we got there, so we are fighting for la auditoría de la deuda. To audit this debt is something that is logical to us.”